The Trend Makers

'Trend Making' is a superpower that movies have just lightly explored, and one which hadn’t been clearly defined until one particular movie finally did. I am a BIG FAN of The Devil Wears Prada and every time I happen to watch it, I am amazed by such a clear explanation the magazine editor gives about our fashion choices and their origin. [click below for this eye-opening scene]

© 2006 Twentieth Century Fox Film Corporation.

In fact, each trend sooner or later comes to affect the life of every single one of us. Through art, movies, songs and fashion… most trends reach us subtly, leaving us seemingly unaffected. Interior Design follows the same path, with new trends and directions coming out continuously, some of them fleeting, being more of a 'Fad' while others grow into a world wide movement! When discussing aesthetic decisions with my clients, it is common for them to announce they ‘have discovered’ the latest trends in magazines or furniture displays, I smile... Those style and decoration choices we may have witnessed surfacing a while ago, maybe thousands of miles away, appear finally at our doorstep.

Surely you must have wondered like I have, how important following a trend really is and if we should instead just take our own independent decisions. Well often it's those 'trail blazers' who throw things together creating something new, a 'new look' or direction, other times these new directions are carefully planned and executed by 'big business' in order to drive sales, but even these experienced players can get things horribly wrong, because a 'trend' is not so clearly defined, and it often organically grows, taking its own shape. Trends may not interest everybody, and the creative people out there can possibly do without. But the creative ones also must keep the finger on the pulse, to feel it, understand and possibly direct it, or at least reinterpret it. Any of us therefore could be the creator of the next trend; it's about our version, our take on a look or theme and how we envisage it can work for us..

Often nobody really knows where 'trends' originate, sometimes it's referred to as 'the tipping point' where a new idea or product becomes adopted by the masses in a way where it becomes the 'next new thing' (remember the Cabbage Patch Kids, or Elmo), but like a virus, they are notice by the creative people first, the most receptive of all, and then move on through their work to touch all others around, and finally reaching the consumers. From fashion, to art, to design, even food… It really doesn’t matter, where it begins. It happens, and we are all influenced by it, whether we are the creators or the followers.

Like an influenza, trends pervade society and touch every single one of us sooner or later. We could certainly try to avoid trends, but as the world won't, we risk being left out there alone, which is also not a bad place. So, let's not dismiss trends as superficial whims, and treat them instead like social events. Let's ride the unstoppable waves of change in taste, weather these affect us for a season or an entire generation.

© 2006 Twentieth Century Fox Film Corporation.

And perhaps that 'cerulean sweater' may be our unwitting choice as much as it is a natural consequence of a Trend, that 'seed' planted by someone, somewhere, growing and taking on a life of its own.